So what happens to AMD now?

With Dirk out, a world of possibilities are opened up

Talk about a wild start to the week. Between the Intel/Nvidia settlement, Verizon’s announcement to flog Apple kit, recovering from a week in Vegas at CES, and now Dirk Meyer’s abrupt departure from AMD the tech press has been without sleep for quite some time. With the industry in such a chaotic state it can be hard to see what the future holds for all these companies, so let us peer into S|A’s patent pending crystal ball to see what’s in store for AMD.

First let’s examine the timing. The announcement was made shortly after CES concluded, where AMD launched their new “Bobcat” core fusion processors. The AMD board at least had the decency to let Dirk see some of his hard work come to fruition, but the decision to cut him loose was actually made months earlier back in November 2010 and hinged on the results of the California Senate race. If you’ll recall, Democrat Barbara Boxer trounced Republican candidate and ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina by a 10% margin thus freeing up some chief executive talent.

The announcement of Thomas Seifert as interim CEO is merely a stall tactic to allow the board time to convert the company branding to a new pink color scheme, cleanse Carly’s Wikipedia page, and install the shark tank at AMD’s Austin Texas world headquarters. Shortly after Carly takes the reigns we will likely see Allen Sockwell sacked to make way for Mark Hurd as the new Senior VP of Human Resources, and with his laundry list of impressive past innovations, Carrot Top will be brought on to reinvent the CTO position.

Within months, massive layoffs at Hurd’s recommendation will halve the total number of AMD employees and the highly paid engineering staff will be replaced by recent college grads with a fresh perspective and mild hangover. Another 5% of AMD staffers will have made direct eye contact with Carly and spontaneously combusted. Riding the wave of layoffs and cost savings AMD will report an impressive profit, boosting stock prices and perceived value and making it an attractive takeover target.

Golden parachute rip-cords in hand, Carly and her crew will sell AMD to Larry Ellison who we are told is already one year into R&D on the second generation Fusion chips which will mate the SPARC T3 floating point engine and multi-threading to some tweaked Bulldozer Integer units and >800 next-generation Radeon SP’s. Similar to Ivy Bridge, this chip is rumored to have up to 2GB of DRAM on package and a copy of Plants Vs. Zombies in firmware. This chip will be produced on Global Foundries upcoming 22nm process.

It is rare to see a board of directors that is looking so far into the future, and as much as we liked Dirk around here we must applaud AMD for its vision. The business school textbooks are about to be rewritten folks, so sit back and witness history. S|A

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Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also a council member with Gerson Lehman Group. FullyAccurate

Thomas Ryan is based in Seattle, Washington. Thomas first began to appreciate the wonders of the semiconductor industry while doing research on his previous favorite hobby, PC gaming. Having co- purchased his first computer at the ripe old age of 11, with $150 and the help of Craigslist he's been buying and building computers ever since.

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